


[Like]

by ProfessorSpork



Category: Easy A, The Social Network
Genre: Crack, F/M, Post-Canon, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-16
Updated: 2011-08-16
Packaged: 2019-08-24 06:17:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,458
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16634558
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ProfessorSpork/pseuds/ProfessorSpork
Summary: A chance meeting at a bar. And maybe this is something they both need.





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**Author's Note:**

>  Written for @shelightsupwell's Crossover Ficathon on livejournal; originally posted August 16, 2011.

 

He doesn’t know why he can’t stop staring at her.

He’s seen plenty of pretty girls before. Been in plenty of bars. But there’s something about the way her auburn hair falls across her bare shoulders that grabs his attention and holds it; when she turns around for a moment and he sees that what he thought was a shirt is in fact a bustier complete with a scarlet A sewn on by hand, he’s... pretty much a goner.

Suddenly he’s leaning against her back as she faces the bar, trying to talk into her ear. “You know,” he says, “I’ve been trying all night to think of a quotation from The Scarlet Letter to come over here and impress you with, but I’m coming up all Shakespeare.”

Thankfully, she seems amused rather than pissed off or creeped out when she turns around. “Really?”

“Well, no. Not really. But I needed an opening line, and that was the first thing I thought of.”

“Cute.”

“So... should I call you Hester?” he asks. That’s pretty much the one thing he remembers from that book, other than the minister beating himself with the flail. Or maybe that was the Da Vinci Code, but still. He definitely remembers the minister having scars, or something. It was a metaphor.

(He’s a businessman; the fact that he remembers anything at all from his prep school literature courses should be impressive.)

“I’m Olive Pengerghast,” she says, offering out a hand.

He shakes it. “Eduardo Saverin.”

“Ed _uar_ do,” she repeats, pulling her mouth at the side and nodding a little. As if she doesn’t quite believe him. “Don’t meet a lot of Eduardos these days.”

“Don’t meet many Olives,” he counters, trying to be coy. Probably failing. “Well. Aside from these,” he modifies, gesturing with his martini glass.

“Nice one. Wow. Yeah, definitely haven’t heard that before,” she says, and the words sound like rejection but the tone of her voice...

“You’re interesting,” he tells her, and she actually laughs.

“That one I have heard before. A lot,” she says.

“I didn’t mean it in a bad way.”

“They never do.”

“Can I buy you a drink?” he asks, jerking his head towards an empty booth. It will only give the illusion of privacy; it’s no less loud over there than over here, and it’s not like anyone can hear them anyway. Still, though.

She smiles.

* * *

“So. Ed,” she says, when they’re both a few drinks in and her phone number is written on a crumpled napkin in his pocket. “Can I call you Ed?”

“Most people don’t.”

“Eddie?”

“Wardo.”

“... Yeah, I’m gonna go with Ed,” she says, and there’s something remarkable about this unremarkable girl. “What do you do for a living?”

“I’m... independently wealthy,” he says, because it’s easier than the explanations, and it’s not like it’s not true. Now, anyway.

“You know, normally I’d think that was a line, but I’m pretty sure your watch costs more than my car, so. I’ll give it to you.”

He frowns, and tugs at the strap self-consciously. “What about you?”

She laughs. “I am currently in a dubious state of financial insecurity I like to call _funemployment_.”

“It’s a bad market,” he allows, but she shakes her head.

“Guessing it’s not so much that as the answer to the age-old question of humans and puppets alike—‘What do you do with a B.A. in English’—is, apparently, nothing.”

“You studied English?” he asks, trying not to stare at her chest. She gesticulates towards it anyway.

“The, ah, blazing ode to Hawthorne across my bosom wasn’t a clue?”

“I didn’t want to assume,” he says, smiling a little.

She’s smirking at him, now. “Do you read a lot of Hawthorne?”

“I lost my taste for that sort of New England puritanical self-flagellation at Harvard, I’m afraid.”

“So now we’re name dropping.”

And he knows he’s drunk because he only snorts and says, “Please. If I wanted to name drop, I’d tell you I co-founded Facebook.”

“Did you, now?” she asks, eyes sparkling as if she’s laughing at him. Maybe she is. He shrugs. “You know, Mr. Griffith—he was my favorite teacher in high school—he hated Facebook.”

“Mr. Griffith and I have that in common.”

She gives him a scrutinizing look. “... Do you want to get out of here?”

“God, yes.”

* * *

They end up making out against her apartment door for a good ten minutes, because he got impatient when she took too long fumbling for her keys. He’s pretty sure he’d be happy to do it all night, but just when he’s really getting into a nice rhythm, she pulls away and mutters, “I’m not having sex with you.”

“Um. Okay?” he says, leaning in to try and capture her lips again, but she dodges to the side.

“No, I mean it. I—you should know. I’m kind of a mess. And my sex life is, like—this _thing_ , and—”

“A thing.”

“Yes. And I just broke up with my boyfriend, whom I’ve been with since high school and was kind of my first everything, and I don’t—I’m not really—”

“Is that why you’re wearing the...?” he trails off, gesticulating vaguely at the A.

“Oh, no. Well. Sort of. It’s a long, _long_ story, featuring a series of pretty horrendous lies and, funnily enough, the internet, so—”

“And that’s why your sex life is a thing.”

“Yes,” she says firmly, and he really has no idea what to do with himself. He really... he _likes_ her.

“We don’t have to do anything,” he says, running a hand through her hair. Normally he’d be running it through his own, but—hers is there. And much, much more appealing. “We can just. I don’t know. Sit on your couch and watch Netflix or something.”

“Are secret co-founders of Facebook even allowed to use Netflix?”

Rather than answer, he leans in and kisses her again.

True to her word, they don’t have sex. He does, however, manage to prolong their make out session, horizontally, while some Molly Ringwald flick plays in the background. She mumbles something about hitting a double for Oakland as he traces the sewn satin of her bustier with his palms, which—ah. He’s getting to second base, and there’s an A on her chest. He’s pretty sure it would be funny if he were sober, and that’s most definitely the first time in his life where that has happened.

Though really, the fact that she doesn’t set anything on fire alone already ranks this as one of his better dates.

* * *

He wakes up to a splitting migraine, a crick in his neck, and the smell of coffee. Groaning, he scrubs his face with his hands and checks his watch. 11:33. Shit.

“Olive?” he croaks, frowning at how completely blown his voice is. It must have been louder in the bar than he thought.

“One sec,” she says, voice coming from the kitchenette, and he sits up and starts looking around for his shoes. “There’s a pancake place just around the corner, but I figured getting a jump start on the caffeination process would—oh. You’re leaving?”

“I have a meeting at one. Can’t get out of it.”

“Right. No rest for the independently wealthy, I guess.”

He absolutely cannot abide the disappointed look on her face. He only has one shoe on, but he gets up and walks over to her anyway. “Hey.”

“Yeah?” she mumbles, staring at the coffeepot in her hand. He reaches out and tilts her chin up, so she’ll look at him.

“Olive Penderghast, I would like nothing better than to go around the corner and eat pancakes with you. I have never had that kind of life, and frankly it sounds... indescribably wonderful. But right now I’m running late, and I can’t show up smelling like beer. So. Rain check, okay?”

“Okay,” she says, and he smiles at the way her jaw works against his fingers as she talks. It must make him look suspicious, because she suddenly raises an eyebrow at him. “You’d better not be blowing me off.”

“I’m not.”

“Because I’ll find you. I will track you down. Can’t imagine there are many Eduardo Saverins in the world. Is that with a u or a w, by the way?”

“A u.”

“See, you shouldn’t have told me that. Now you’ll never be rid of me. My Facebook stalking skills are legendary.”

“I’m not on Facebook.”

“Of course you’re not,” she agrees, rolling her eyes. He wonders if it’s strange that the fact that she doesn’t take him seriously is the most attractive thing about her. “So how am I supposed to find you?”

“I’ll call you,” he says.

He means it.


End file.
